Millport

As part of upgrading works to Millport’s sea walls and flood defenses, abrasive blast cleaning of the existing wall and parapet walls, crack repairs, and re-painting were required. Two jetties were also undergoing structural repairs.

Shotcrete Services completed all the preparatory works and provided materials, labour, and plant to carry out the sprayed concrete activity and all other works.

The small island of Cumbrae is situated off the west coast of Scotland and is only accessible via a small (intermittently running) local ferry, with varying weight and load type restrictions that change on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. Organising deliveries, collections and plant hire was a challenge. With careful planning, daily meetings with our network of suppliers and a dedicated office team, we delivered the project without any time lost on the project.

The sprayed works were located on 2 Jetties that were approximately 400m apart, stretching out approximately 150m from the foreshore on the seafront. 2 separate setups were required to service these works. The sea wall also required its own compound for the works, and all of this was directly adjacent to a busy seaside location, open to the public throughout.

Our experience in this kind of location meant we could build robust compounds and had a supervisor on site throughout to act as a lookout as the beaches were open to the public, and it was impossible to fence off the worksites meaning constant vigilance was required so maintain a safe interface between the public and our work.

The Jetty work was subject to working with the fast-changing tides, some areas of the works had a maximum of 1 hour to complete staged works so daily reviews of tides and surges were required to maximise efficiency and safety.

Crocodile Jetty is a popular tourist attraction on the island and attracts most of the islands visitors at some point of their visit, therefore access to this feature needed to remain open whenever possible.

The sprayed works were completed using Aliva airpowered dry guns fed by Gen Air 650cfm compressors. Between 5 and 15 tonnes of Natcem530 material were used daily, filling the jetty voids. Tide times were be monitored daily and works planned around the available. The dry spray gun and compressor were situated in an allocated bay area at the start of the jetties. The pallets of dry spray material were located adjacent to the gun.

Once the voids were filled there were areas of re-pointing to complete and also extensive repairs to the top surfaces of both jetties to make access for the public and mariners safe again. The top surfaces were hand-finished using Natcem 35.

The sea wall runs along the promenade on the seafront, it had multiple layers of old paint and evidence of historic patch repairs along its length.

The scope of work was to grit blast the wall’s top and road-facing sides to remove all the paint, then cut out any defects or loose/ cracked areas and repair them using a combination of Fosroc HB45 and Natcem 35.

The wall is adjacent to the main wall and therefore a fully enclosed scaffold was required to carry out both the grit blasting and painting works. The paint was a specialist marine paint, Fosroc Dekguard DS. This required a total of 3 coats to achieve the specified finish.

The seaward face of the wall was not required to be painted, however crack repairs were completed from a manrider basket to complete all the works.

Our skilled onsite and office based team collaborated to overcome logistical challenges resulting in no delay to plant or material supply during the works.

Vigilance of site supervision ensured safety controls between our working areas and public access completed with minimised risk.

Planning and coordination of activities to overcome tidal & compound location challenges to maximise productivity in the different working areas and conditions.